There’s only one way to celebrate John Yoo’s 42nd birthday (it’s today)–and that’s to bestow upon him the sort of kind words my Hardass Asian Grandma would offer a grandson like him if she were still alive today:

You know, you not look healthy, John. Now that you so old you have to think about your health. Your face is so fat. Your blood pressure is bad. When grandpa was your age he weigh 140 pounds and move dressers and refrigerator all around our house. Grandpa was strong and healthy.

You know, your mother says you do not visit at all, only four times a year for holidays. Such bad children after they come to America, they do not care about taking care of their mothers.

You look so old, John! You should exercise. Your wife leave you if you look too ugly.

My other grandchildren, they give me three and four and five great-grandchildren. What you give me? My friends at singing group tell me you like torture children. Ai-ya! That is bad, devil child! Why you so bad?

I work so hard all my life to get grandchild like this. 42 years waste!

He maintains his composure despite the public’s unfair treatment of him. The media, and its adherents, make him out to be a legal scholar who tailored his views for the Bush administration. This is not the case at all. His views were always pretty much that there are maximum war-time powers for the executive branch. Thereafter, what the president believes is an asset, the president should be able to yield during a time of war.

I don’t agree with him on a lot of issues, but I give Yoo a lot of props for not being angry most of the times about the public’s mis-categorization of his torture memos and his reasons for writing them.

Doughnut face is a good description, Jen – 甜甜圈面? I wonder if there’s such an expression in Chinese? As for his character, all I can think of are words I used for other people in the Administration who hired him, like wolf’s heart dog’s lung’s (狼心狗肺), or perhaps tortoise egg – wang ba dan (王八蛋). I’m just a Mandarin student, who once worked in Taiwan. Perhaps you, or other readers have suggestions for an expression which sums up John’s character.

Yeah guys, check out the Oscar-winning documentary Taxi to the Darkside by Alex Gibney. John Yoo shamelessly explains his work in it. Funny how Gibney’s documentaries always have a despicable Asian in it. Smartest Guys in the Room was about the Enron mess. Apparently one of the masterminds behind that scam was an Asian executive who cashed out and left the country before shit hit the fan publicly.